Ghada Hussein mourns at the grave of her son, Mohammed Toufayli, a Hezbollah fighter killed during the ongoing war, in a temporary cemetery in the coastal city of Saida, in southern Lebanon, on June 11, 2026. Photo Anwar AMRO / AFP
Israel claimed Sunday that it had killed Ali Mussa Daqdouq, a high-ranking Hezbollah commander and former U.S. prisoner from 2007 to 2012, in southern Lebanon last Friday. Until that day, he remained on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list of the U.S. Treasury Department.
The Israeli army took to X to boast the killing of "one of the most senior officials" in Hezbollah. According to the Israelis, he was the "commander of the team charged with the protection" of former Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel in November 2024, a commander in Hezbollah's Radwan elite unit, "commander in the operations department of the Nasr unit [a strategic force tasked with carrying out direct combat operations]," and head of the party's "infantry unit."
Wounded in an Israeli strike on a building in the Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood, near Damascus, in November 2024, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, he was accused by Israel of establishing a military network for Hezbollah in the non-occupied Syrian part of the Golan. The Israeli army also stated in its statement that he was head of the "Golan unit," an "operational branch charged with Hezbollah's deployment in Syria and the establishment of military infrastructure near the border of the State of Israel."
"The elimination of Daqdouq is of great importance, as he is another top Hezbollah official with whom we have settled our accounts,' the Israeli army wrote.
Five million dollars
The information about his assassination was first published in the afternoon by Israel's ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter. He pointed out that Daqdouq had been a Hezbollah member since 1983, had been "held responsible for an attack carried out in 2007 against American soldiers" in Iraq, and that "a $5 million reward was offered for his capture." Accused of organizing a 2007 kidnapping in Iraq that led to the death of five American soldiers, he was acquitted in 2012 by an Iraqi court because of a lack of concrete evidence against him. Washington had unsuccessfully tried to obtain his extradition to the United States.
According to journalist Elizabeth Tsurkov, Daqdouq was assisting pro-Iranian militias in Iraq when he was arrested. After his release, he reportedly commanded Hezbollah networks in Syria under the Bashar al-Assad regime, which fell in December 2024. Israel had reportedly failed to eliminate him in November 2024 during a strike on the Sayyeda Zeinab area, near Damascus, she reports.
If his death is confirmed by Hezbollah, which has not issued any announcements about deaths in its ranks since the war re-escalated on March 2, he would be one of the highest-ranking members of Hezbollah targeted by Israel during this war.
Israel has killed at least 3,756 people and wounded 11,632 others since March 2, according to the latest figures issued by the Health Ministry.
This article originally appeared in French on L'Orient-Le Jour.
